Why Not Go?
Elaine is a retired teacher who runs half marathons and does Zumba. She always has wanted to walk the Camino.
Her daughter and niece planned a 2026 Camino starting in Saint Jean Pied de Port and ending four weeks later in Santiago. Nope, too ambitious for her tastes.
I thought it would be fun to help her plan a more leisurely itinerary and meet up with them in Lavacolla to walk into Santiago together.
Game on.
Initially I only planned to help with the plan. When I started going along on training hikes, I was all in for the whole adventure. When I mentioned it to Pam, she jumped on the idea too. You can never do too many Caminos, we know.
Elaine's family is from Basque country. After Santiago, we will go visit her ancestral village, Tolosa, for a few days.
That's the big picture. The Camino before the Camino is well underway. We leave for Spain October 2.
Her daughter and niece planned a 2026 Camino starting in Saint Jean Pied de Port and ending four weeks later in Santiago. Nope, too ambitious for her tastes.
I thought it would be fun to help her plan a more leisurely itinerary and meet up with them in Lavacolla to walk into Santiago together.
Game on.
Initially I only planned to help with the plan. When I started going along on training hikes, I was all in for the whole adventure. When I mentioned it to Pam, she jumped on the idea too. You can never do too many Caminos, we know.
Elaine's family is from Basque country. After Santiago, we will go visit her ancestral village, Tolosa, for a few days.
That's the big picture. The Camino before the Camino is well underway. We leave for Spain October 2.
Training
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Pam is training on her own in Fredericksburg VA where she lives. But, Elaine and I each live only a few miles from San Felasco State Preserve. Even in Florida summer heat, its shade makes walking tolerable. We started on the 2-mile trails and promoted ourselves to the 3-miler pretty quickly. It has a good hill, not usual for Florida, at one end. We would walk clockwise to go down the hill first on one walk and then counterclockwise to go uphill at the end of the walk the next time.
We did well enough to try ourselves on the next longest trail, about 5.5 miles. There are a few benches where we could rest and re-hydrate. In in the shade Florida's 80 to 90 degree summer temperatures are a strain. We felt great about our progress.
Until . . . the ticks found us.
The longer trails are less used and thus more grassy. By the time we had graduated to the 6.5-mile trail, ticks had found each of us twice. We read about alpha gal and lyme, and wigged out. Dang. We gave up on our gorgeous San Felasco.
How Camino-like . . . adjust and adapt.
We did well enough to try ourselves on the next longest trail, about 5.5 miles. There are a few benches where we could rest and re-hydrate. In in the shade Florida's 80 to 90 degree summer temperatures are a strain. We felt great about our progress.
Until . . . the ticks found us.
The longer trails are less used and thus more grassy. By the time we had graduated to the 6.5-mile trail, ticks had found each of us twice. We read about alpha gal and lyme, and wigged out. Dang. We gave up on our gorgeous San Felasco.
How Camino-like . . . adjust and adapt.
 Mushrooms |  Bugs |  Bats, really just the equipment for catching them for research |
We moved on to equally rigorous, but less ticky training sites, as we'll say in the next post.
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